Wisconsin mother featured in quit-smoking TV ad

Amanda Brenden, 30, of Eau Claire is featured in a new television ad produced by the Center for Disease Control. The mother's cigarette smoking habit caused health complications for her baby.
Rachel Minske

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Wisconsin mother Amanda Brenden is featured in a new television advertisement aiming to discourage the smoking of cigarettes. After smoking for many years, the Eau Claire resident gave birth to a baby girl with severe respiratory complications.(Photo: Rachel Minske/Press-Gazette Media)Buy Photo

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Amanda Brenden's daughter was born with health issues due to her smoking habits

Brenden is featured in a television campaign ad aimed to encourage smokers to quit

That's what Amanda Brenden said she felt when her daughter was born with a number of health complications.

Born two months premature, the baby weighed 3 pounds at birth and spent her first month of life in the hospital's neonatal intensive care unit. She was born without a sucking reflex and was fed by a tube.

"Once I brought her home she started to have some breathing problems," the 30-year-old Eau Claire mother said.

Brenden's daughter, now 7, takes daily medications to help offset the severe allergies and asthma she has developed. And it's because Brenden smoked when she was pregnant.

Now she is trying to prevent other women from smoking during their pregnancy by telling her story in a new TV ad produced by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The agency has a "Tips from Former Smokers" campaign running this summer.

"I am sharing my story to save other moms from the guilt I feel from my child's illness," said Brenden, who talked about her participation in the project at De Pere City Hall this week.

The 30-second advertisement is set in a hospital's neonatal intensive care unit and features images of Brenden sitting next to her baby's incubator. Similar to other advertisements in the CDC's campaign, Brenden offers a tip for viewers from a former smoker.

"Speak into the opening so your baby can hear you better," Brenden says as she peers into a hole on the incubator designed for parents to interact with their infants.

Brenden said she smoked her first cigarette in fifth grade and by age 12 she was smoking every day, she said.

"In high school I started skipping class to smoke, and that's when I knew I was addicted to nicotine," she said. "I smoked when I was young because everyone I knew smoked."

Within days of filming the advertisement, Brenden's father was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer from smoking cigarettes.

"When I found out I was pregnant I was still smoking," she said. "I didn't think anything bad would actually happen to me or my baby."

The mother now works in the tobacco prevention department for Wisconsin Women's Health Foundation and interacts daily with women who are trying to quit smoking. One day, Brenden received an email from her supervisor asking if she knew of any women who would qualify to be featured in the CDC's campaign.

"At the time there weren't any qualified people," Brenden said. "But I was."

Brenden said returning to the hospital to film the television spot brought back a flood of memories.

"Any time I go into a hospital I smell that hospital smell and I'm taken back to my time in the (neonatal intensive care unit)," said Brenden, who went on to have two more children.

"When I think back to my time there with my daughter it almost feels like a dream."

According to a 2011 report released by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 11.5 percent of pregnant women in Brown County smoked from 2008 to 2010.

The "Tips From Former Smokers" campaign first launched in March 2012. An estimated 1.64 million Americans tried to quit smoking because of the 2012 campaign and at least 100,000 are expected to quit smoking for good, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources.

Brenden's TV ad will broadcast in nearly every market in the United States and runs through Labor Day.

"I struggled with nicotine addiction for a very long time," she said. "It's not cool. It's not something you want to start."